News Archive

In a research article just published in PLoS Biology and titled “How Many Species Are There on Earth and in the Ocean?,” scientists estimate that the natural world contains about 8.7 million species, but that the vast majority have not been identified and that cataloguing them all could take more than 1,000 years. The number of species is derived from studying relationships between the branches and leaves of the...

A recent article in the journal Science, “Rapid Range Shifts of Species Associated with High Levels of Climate Warming,” indicates that Earth’s fauna and flora are migrating to cooler northern climes three times faster previously noted. The article examined the movements of about 2,000 species and found that they are moving away from the equator at an average rate of 14.8 feet a day and up mountains at a rate of...

As reported on our web site’s Earth Gate page, “the first documented fatality in the United States from rabies linked to a vampire bat attack was revealed by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention on August 12. The victim was a 19-year-old migrant worker who was bitten on the heel in his native Mexican state of Michoacán last summer. In the CDC’s Morbidity and Mortality weekly report, it said the man...